(Spain 1999 101m) DVD1/2
Aka. Todo Sobre Mi Madre
Children are not made in a day
p Pedro Almodóvar d/w Pedro Almodóvar ph Alfonso Beato ed José Salcedo m Alberto Iglesias art Antxón Gómez
Cecilia Roth (Manuela), Marisa Paredes (Huma Rojo), Penélope Cruz (Hermana Rosa), Antonia San Juan (Agrado), Eloy Azorin (Esteban), Toni Canto (Lola), Candela Peña (Nina), Rosa Maria Sardà (Rosa’s mother), Fernando Fernan Gomez (Rosa’s father), Carlos Lozano (Mario), Cayetana Guillen Cuervo (Mamen),
There had been hints in Live Flesh that Pedro Almodóvar was achieving a hitherto sense of maturity in his work. But what made his next film seem all the more astonishing was not that this newfound maturity was so plain to see but that he did it with the very same sort of characters that populated his earlier, extravagant sex comedies. I mean, the plot is the sort of thing the working class Yorkshire playwright played by Graham Chapman in that immortal Python sketch might write about if his writer’s cramp would only go away.
Manuela, a counsellor at a local Madrid hospital specialising in organ donation, finds her private life imitate her work when her young son, Esteban, is tragically killed on the night of his 18th birthday when he is run down by a car chasing after another vehicle taking away the star of the play he’d just seen as a birthday treat. Turning her back on her life, Manuela runs off to Barcelona, from whence she had fled 18 years previously to have her son. She intends to look up her son’s father, Lola, a transvestite formerly called Esteban, like his son. In doing so she befriends her old transsexual friend Agrado and her friend Rosa, a nun working in a shelter who, it transpires, it pregnant with another child of Lola’s, and that both are HIV positive. In addition, Manuela looks up the actress, Huma Roja, who she saw that fateful night in the very same play, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, she once played Stella in herself many years previously. She then befriends not only Roja but Roja’s heroin addicted co-star and lesbian lover Nina.
You see what I mean – nuns, homosexuals, transvestites, transsexuals, junkies, AIDS, you name it, it’s here. Yet we care about these characters so much more than their superficial predecessors because for all the surface falsities, there is one thing, as Agrado says, that is real about them and that’s their feelings. In the past the outlandish eccentricities would have taken hold like gangrene and dragged the film down to the level of merely watchable camp. There’s something a whole lot deeper going on here, and if it owes much to All About Eve (and how hilarious it is to see that dubbed horribly into Spanish) it owes equally as much to Minnelli, Sirk and Cukor’s The Women.
Essentially it’s about following your heart, or your son’s, as Manuela quite literally does before making her escape. Or, as Maria said in The Sound of Music with the sort of sentimental schmaltz that Almodóvar would have approved; “when the lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a window.” Here we have a tragic-comedy worthy of the title, and if Victoria Abril and Carmen Maura aren’t here, everyone else who matters is, with Paredes superb, Cruz so fragile you want to wrap her up in bubble-wrap but also with arguably the best line in the film (“Prada is perfect for nuns”), San Juan irreplaceable as Agrado and, best of all, Roth stunning as Manuela, holding the whole thing together with a solidity and finesse that make us wonder why we haven’t seen her given such opportunities before. Such is the depth of feeling, of humanity, that Almodóvar invests his rag-tag of woman, the audience has been put through the wringer by the end of proceedings for here’s a film that, through all the tears, sums up the emotional battering of life with Agrado’s simple berating of her returned friend; “I like to say goodbye to the people I love.” The film is dedicated to numerous actress, famous and otherwise, and to all mothers (could the evoking of the very name Stella also reference the eponymous mother played by Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas?), including Almodóvar’s own (note that young Esteban’s fateful birthday is, like Pedro’s, 25th September).
Another film you cite and another film to ALSO make my list (I, however, have this film in my top 20)!!!! Yes, agreed, he shows his maturity off by making a film with exactly the same quirkyness that his films prior to this ran with so abundantly. But, then again, name on film by this director that isn’t wonderfully quirky. I must admit, sheepishly, that Almodovar is, I believe, like Stanley Kubrick, in the sense that I don’t think this director is capable of a dud. I’ve loved each film he has made better than the last up to TALK TO HER. TALK TO HER, in my mind, is Pedro’s masterpiece although this film comes close. I’m not embarrassed to say that I love this film, this director and all of his work. A new film by Almodovar is an event to me and for most of the movie-goers in my beloved NYC. This guy is a genius. Flat out. And a creative genius at that. Easily one of the ten best film-makers working on the planet today. Again, I make no apologies in my gushing.
C’mon Allan, 46? You know I never challenge you, EVER, on your numerical order of these count-downsM However, I gotta ask if you were smoking crack when you numbered this one. This film is, by definition of one of Sammy’s most quotable lines, A STAGGERING MASTERPIECE. I was really hoping (and betting) this one was gonna crack your top 20. Ah, well, can’t have everything I guess. Nice essay though and always appreciative of your work. I can’t wait to see what’s coming next! Thanx, Dennis
An excellent little piece on a movie I not only haven’t seen but, upon further investigation, was not even familiar with the plot of. I’d put atop my Netflix queue but for some reason they have it in the “saved” section as of now. Ah well – I’m pretty sure it’s easily available in most rental stores.
I’ve loved “woman’s pictures” that were great from the ’40s on, but this and all it’s directors film I find unbearably camp, wayward, soapy and soapily weepy. Even though there were some shots at the beginning, the car crash, that were superbly staged, the whole thing is an effinate mess. The feminie version of boring, teenage macho action movies. Perhaps, if I work on it for a 100 years, I’ll be able to appreciate this and ‘Desparate Housewives’ and ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’..
Ewwwww, BOBBY J., tell us how you really feel! I have to, no offense intended, blatantly disagree with you on this one. Perhaps this film is not your cup of tea, but to call it a “mess” is really striking a blow. What I love about Almodovar, and I think he gets better at it with each film, is that he portrays life as unpredictable and populated by people we usually keep in the peripheral. Drag Queens, Transvestites, Transexuals, Overtly Neurotic Women and Flamboyantly Gay Men are part of our world whether we like to acknowledge their existance or not. It’s true that Almodovar is gay, but I don’t necessarily think that has to do with his choosing this kind of flamboyancy in story and character. Mostly, I think he chooses these people because they FEEL. The range of emotions in any of Almodovars range from the quiet to the hysterical and sometimes within seconds of each other. As for him making films about women, I’ll refer you to his masterpiece TALK TO HER where, mostly, the film centers around two men.
good answer, I appreciate your perspective Dennis. I probably should have used “effeminate indulgance” instead of “mess”. I agree with you on the variety of extreme emotions displayed, like PMT flushed on screen…lol. Dennis, I appreciate some of the talent, some sequences are very well set down and it has a bright primary, sun-drenched glow that’s attractive. For me, though I have an appreciation of a wide variety of genres, styles and sensibilities. This is on the extreme edge, with a condensed soap plot that runs on the extreme feminie. Back to ‘Mildred Pierce’, ‘Random Harvest’, ‘Waterloo Bridge’ and ‘Gone with the Wind’ foe me, I think.
BOBBY J. The list of films you mention here at the end of your commentary are about women that border on being men. Midred Pierce is a strong woman. Scarlett O’Hara will fight violently for what is hers. The females in these films are stretching their femininity to the breaking point and practically strutting like men. I’m not sure what you mean then about ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER being on the “extreme edge”. Its about women being, well, women. I’m just wondering if the effeminite quality in the male characters is what really makes this film walk on the edge for you. I don’t know. This film portrays gay people in a very realistic light. I much more prefer an accurate depiction than say a broad one like the more stereotypical gay men in something like THE BIRDCAGE. Then, again I love THE BIRDCAGE because its meant to play up on the gay cliche’s. I’m just under the impression you may be uncomfortable with gay themed movies in general. Which would be a pity considering so many great films in the 90’s had gay themes. WILD
WILD REEDS, ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER, MAGNOLIA, BEAUTIFUL THING, ELECTION, THE BIRDCAGE, LIVE FLESH, BRAM STOKERS DRACULA, and FIGHT CLUB are all tremendous films that center on, or have major sub-plots that are gay themed. Whether I support or disapprove of a persons sexual identity it makes little difference, in the realms of the art of film if a movie depicts its characters or themes with in the contexts of a homosexual nature. THE HOURS, a film about lesbianism, is one of my top two films of that year. CAPOTE, my favorite American film of 2005 has a flamboyantly gay man as its main protagonist. I feel that BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, about homosexual romance, is one of the supreme love stories in 40 years. I find none of these films walking an edge. And then there’s FIGHT CLUB, and I remember wondering if the film could get any any fucking gayer than it is. To each his own I say. I just don’t let my personal views influence my judgement in art wheter for it or against it.
Dennis you make a superb, excellent point here. The movies I mentioned are ‘women’s pictures’ that draw in the female and that men could watch also. Almodóvar’s movies, maybe because of his sexuality – come across in plot terms and in their sudden emotional variations as good-looking but extremely condensed soaps (Allan’s reference to Doug Sirk does justice to it), a form of entertainment that’s never appealed to me. It’s just a sensibility that I’m not in tune with and those that are can watch it with enjoyment. I’m just outside that particular ‘matrix’.
Fair enough answer BOBBY J.
This is Almodovar’s most affecting film, also the one I keep returning to most often. It is part of a trilogy of sorts for the director that begins with Live Flesh and runs through Talk to her (possibly Almodovar’s greatest work). I don’t believe that any work of his since this last has been as strong as three mentioned here even if he of course remains an interesting and sometimes deceptive director. All About my mother also has one of Almodovar’s two strongest scores (the other one being Talk to her). Here’s my favorite track (can be heard in the video above at the beginning with the overhead shot of the Barcelona lights):
His Broken Embraces releases shortly at this end..
Indeed Kaleem. I can’t wait!!!
My favorite Almodovar film!
Excellent choice there “Just Another Film Buff” and thanks again for stopping by. For me its TALK TO HER and ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER is a close call.
What a genius Almodovar is! Who else could take such esoteric material and make it not only enjoyable, but relatable. It takes a lot of chutzpah for a male director to swan dive into the gulf of womanhood (I can’t believe I just wrote that) and emerge with such truth, HUMAN truth. While the characters of this film seem to represent certain female archetypes, they still flow organically through the ingenious plot. Almodovar shows us that any taboo subject can be tackled without it being exploited when it is done with a compassionate heart. The sheer WARMTH of this movie is what makes it a stunning success. The performances in this film are unforgettable. Cecilia Roth is so dazzling and real, and heartbreaking. But only a genius like Almodovar can break our hearts but still give us hope.